Enough to Go By
by polar-realm
Summary: Post-game vignette - Terra grows roses these days, and everything is different, or at least different enough. Terra/Setzer


Setzer used to give Terra roses once, in the old days, before she told him to stop. She said that they meant too much – all flowers, but roses in particular – and that they died too quickly.

He still isn't used to thinking of it like that, not truly. All the fine ladies he's ever known had liked flowers, as they liked silks and expensive wines, handsome rogues who couldn't be trusted. They liked romance and danger, pretty petty things, and weren't troubled to see them fade. In the days after Daryl died, he hadn't been all that different himself, and in the days after the world ended – well. All those artful little luxuries had been hard enough to come by, without thinking anything could hold on forever. Flowers die. He had known that then, and he had thought nothing of it at all.

But these days there are roses growing wild around Terra's cottage, in a tangle of blossoms and thorns. He remembers old stories, looking at them. Witches' gardens, abandoned halls. Enchanted castles, and how it's never wise to pluck a rose from a stranger's garden. He reaches out to touch one of the petals, a deep dark crimson that feels like silk beneath his fingers. Fragile, yes, but well defended. Hard to touch without getting hurt. Terra used to be like that, in the days of ruin, before she found a place to put down roots. Now she's more like the wildflowers that grow by the side of the road, tough and bright and guileless.

Acting on impulse, he snaps the stem, heedless of the thorns that pierce his skin. And of course she's there to see him, standing in the doorway with her head tilted, amusement and annoyance fighting in her eyes.

"Didn't I tell you not to do that?" She closes her hands over his, gently. Her voice is steel.

"You did."

She smiles sadly. "Then why?"

"Stories," he says, "need to start somewhere. So why not with a debt incurred?" He gives her the rose with a slight bow, courtly enough to make her laugh, and she takes it from him.

"Is this a fairy tale, then, or a folksong? Am I to be the witch, or the elf-knight with a debt to Hell? Or is it the beast this time?" Her tone is light, but he can see something careful and closed-off in her face, hiding behind the smile, and he wishes he had spoken differently.

But then, even back when the world had magic, there'd been no spell to grant a wish or unspeak a word, and he isn't going to waste time trying to find one now. And in the end, it hardly matters – or not like that, at least, not to Setzer. Witch or beast, he could care less, and he knows how difficult some debts can be to shake.

"Perhaps so," he says, offering her a crooked grin. "I'm not averse to an ignominious fate, if it comes to that. But regardless, I'll leave the stealing to that thief. What I take, I win, fair and square."

"Is that a challenge, gambler?"

"An offer. I don't doubt you're astute enough to see the value."

She does smile then, with no pretense that even his instincts can pick up on, fierce and familiar enough to catch at something inside him he had thought forgotten.

"Of course," she says, laying a hand lightly on his arm. "I'd forgotten how modest and self-effacing you can be. I take it you'll be staying for a while, then?"

Setzer blinks, temporarily taken aback by the teasing in her voice, and even more so by the hope. It isn't something he's used to, not from her, not even now that ruin is simply memory. But she bends forward to tuck the rose into the lapel of his coat, and he notices for the first time the grass-stains on her gloves, the smudge of dirt above one pale green eyebrow. He supposes it shouldn't surprise him that she's taken up gardening, or, for that matter, that it's roses she grows. The damnable things might die quickly, but he's fair to confident that these ones made it through the last winter, and it's enough to make him wonder if there isn't a bit of stubborn magic still clinging to this place, hanging on until the world turns back again.

"I might, at that," he says. "For a while. But I left the Falcon back down the way, and at the moment she's in want of a copilot – if this house can mind itself for a time?"

Terra nods and grins back at him, comradely in a way that reminds him of older days, other risks and chances, the gleam of danger on the horizon and reflected in her eyes. It's a good place she's made for herself here, as witches' gardens go. He doesn't doubt she'll be wanting to keep it, and keep it safe, more than he's ever wanted any place or thing in his life. But when he leads her up the rambling footpath to the clearing where he's left the Falcon grounded, it's only flying they talk of, and not old stories, or histories, or all the things that roses can mean. And when the ship lurches skyward, caught up by forces that have nothing to do with magic, Terra takes the wheel with gleeful determination, and they don't either of them look down, or back.


End file.
